The Pros Who Almost Quit, and the People Who Kept Them Playing

A $20 Entry Fee and $50 in His Pocket

Lee Trevino grew up in a home at the back of a golf course, raised by his mother, who cleaned houses, and his grandfather, a gravedigger. He quit school in the eighth grade to work and help support his family. Golf was close enough to see but not to afford, so he taught himself, caddied and worked as a greenkeeper to stay near the game. Hardy Greenwood, who owned Hardy's Driving Range, took him on as a protégé.

After four years in the Marines, Trevino landed a job at Horizon Hills Country Club in El Paso that paid $30 a week as "pro/locker attendant/cart man," and he often made more in daily money games than he did on the payroll. When the 1967 U.S. Open came around, it was his wife who scraped together the $20 entry fee. He arrived with $50 in his pocket.

Trevino went on to the World Golf Hall of Fame, but he never forgot how the game looked from the outside. "I knew that back when I played golf in the early '50s and stuff that it was a wealthy man's game," he told the PGA Tour. Or, as he put it more simply, "I wasn't supposed to play this game."

One Grown-Up Who Opened the Gate

Kamaiu Johnson found golf at 13 by swinging a stick outside his family's apartment, right next to Hilaman Golf Course in Tallahassee. Home was a two-bedroom Section 8 apartment he shared with his grandmother and other relatives, and he slept under the dining room table. He had left school in the eighth grade. Nothing about his life pointed toward a golf course, except the one next door.

Then Jan Auger, an assistant pro there, made him a deal. If he did chores, he could have free range balls and play rounds for a dollar. "It was like, all of a sudden, I had purpose," he told NPR. Later, local businesses and others helped pay for his equipment, lessons and tournament entry fees. Johnson went on to earn his GED, win the 2020 APGA Tour Championship and tee it up in his first PGA Tour event.

Lanto Griffin's gate opened on the worst day of his childhood. His father died of a brain tumor when Lanto was 12, and that same day Steve Prater, the pro at Blacksburg Country Club, secured the boy an honorary membership. Then he taught him for free.

Even with that start, the money nearly ran out. In 2014, as a young pro, Griffin had $176 in his bank account, and in the spring of 2017 he told his agent he was quitting. He kept going instead, and in 2019 he won the Houston Open on the PGA Tour. He credits 20 or 30 people who opened their checkbooks for him through junior golf, amateur golf and the mini-tours. Of Prater, he told the PGA Tour, "I wouldn't be here without him."

The talent was there. The money was not. Then someone stepped in.

When Family and a Foundation Carry the Cost

Sometimes the person who steps in has nothing to give but work. Lizette Salas grew up in Azusa, California, where her father, Ramon, who came from Zacatecas, Mexico, in 1973, took a handyman job at Azusa Greens, a public course, and became its lead mechanic. He quietly did side jobs at the course in exchange for one lesson a week for his daughter. Salas did not even know at the time. "I found out later that my dad was doing side jobs for him and fixing cars, so that I could get a lesson every Saturday," she told CBS. Those Saturday lessons led to a golf scholarship at USC, where she became the first in her family to graduate from college, and then to the LPGA.

Mariah Stackhouse has never been shy about what stands in the way. "Quite frankly golf is a very expensive sport to participate in," she told Reuters in 2018. Competing at the top junior and amateur levels, she explained, means traveling well outside your home state, and travel costs alone can keep low-income players from turning pro.

She had help of her own. Support from the Hank Aaron Chasing the Dream Foundation allowed her to compete in junior tournaments, and she won 97 times. She went on to Stanford as a four-time All-American and then to the LPGA. When she met Aaron, she said, "His foundation helped me pursue my dream."

Grown Pros Who Nearly Walked Away

Money troubles do not end when a junior grows up. Ben Griffin played college golf at North Carolina and reached the Korn Ferry Tour, then lost his status there in 2019. Sports Illustrated reported that "the financial burden of competing on mini-tours became too overwhelming," and his family had been hit hard in the 2008 financial crisis. So he quit, and in 2021 he went to work as a residential mortgage loan officer in Chapel Hill. "When I stepped away from golf," he said, as Golf.com reported, "I was completely done."

He was not done. In July 2021, members of Highland Springs Country Club paid for his travel to a Korn Ferry Tour Monday qualifier. He shot 65 and got in. A friend of his trainer offered sponsorship, and Golf.com reports that his main sponsor offered to take care of his finances for two years. Griffin made it to the PGA Tour.

Tim O'Neal's story shows what happens when help is slow to arrive. An HBCU graduate, he missed earning his PGA Tour card by one shot in 2000, and again four years later. Mini-tour events cost $800 to $1,000 each to enter with no promise of earning it back, so he shared hotel rooms four to a room. In 2008 he earned $10,000, lost his status and had trouble paying his mortgage. "If you don't have financial backing, golf is hard. Eventually, I ran out of money," he told Andscape.

His mother told him he was "too good to quit," and he kept playing, giving lessons and working in a golf store to get by. At 50 he earned status on PGA Tour Champions. Back in 2009, he put the whole problem in two sentences. "You have guys that can play at this level," he said. "But they just don't have the finances to go do it."

Someone Has to Step In Sooner

Read these stories side by side and the pattern is hard to miss. None of these players was short on talent. What they were short on, at one moment or another, was $20, a lesson, a plane ticket, a sponsor or a one-dollar round. And in nearly every case the turning point was a person: a wife, a club pro, a father trading his work for lessons, a foundation, a group of club members.

The hard part is that luck decides who meets that person. For every junior who finds a Jan Auger or a Steve Prater, others simply watch their families run out of money and quietly stop playing. We wrote about that pattern in why talented junior golfers walk away.

Future Golfers of America was built so that a gifted kid does not have to wait for luck. FGA is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit based in San Antonio that funds talented competitive junior golfers whose families cannot keep up with tournament fees, equipment, coaching and travel, and 100% of donations support junior golfers directly. You can be the person who steps in through the #DriveForJuniors Holiday Drive, which runs through December 31, or with a gift any time on our donate page. And if you know a junior who could become the next story like these, nominate them for the Founding Athlete Class through November 30, 2026.

Common Questions

Sources

• PGA Tour, "'I wasn't supposed to play the game'" (Lee Trevino, 2023)
• The Memorial Tournament, Lee Trevino honoree page
• PGA Tour, Kamaiu Johnson long-form (2021)
• NPR via GPB, "A Golfer's Dream Delayed, But Finally Realized At The Game's Highest Level" (2021)
• PGA Tour, "Lanto Griffin's incredible journey leads to emotional first PGA Tour win" (2019)
• Sports Illustrated, "Underdogs have their day on PGA Tour" (2019)
• CBS News Los Angeles, "LPGA Golfer Lizette Salas On Playing At USC & Growing Up In Azusa"
• NBC Sports, "Lizette Salas' mental health journey has been a long road"
• SCGA, "Lizette Salas: Giving back to the game she loves"
• Reuters via SBS News, "High cost remains biggest barrier to diversity in golf" (2018)
• NBC Sports (Golf Channel), "Mariah Stackhouse meets Hank Aaron: 'He helped me pursue my dream'"
• Golf.com, "Ben Griffin's golf return"
• Sports Illustrated, "Ben Griffin Used to Work a Desk Job, Now He's a Rising PGA Tour Rookie"
• Andscape, "One stroke kept Tim O'Neal from PGA Tour"
• Nevada Appeal, "For two Black golfers, path to PGA Tour is rocky" (2009)
• Future Golfers of America, #DriveForJuniors Holiday Drive
• Future Golfers of America, #DriveForJuniors National Fund